


Friend

by junoangelpie



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Immortal Merlin, Merlin Season 5 Spoilers, pov tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 08:03:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14950784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junoangelpie/pseuds/junoangelpie
Summary: As a child, Merlin would talk to a tree when he felt lonely.





	Friend

Maple was a tree. Not the largest tree in the forest, per se, but he held his own on the constant, achingly slow race to the Light. He had an advantage, you see. He wasn’t one of those unfortunate trees that were scattered at the edge of where the Metal-Wielding Maniacs lived, so he wasn’t cut down in his prime like his fourteenth cousin. She was just about to flower. No, Maple’s seed had wisely landed deeper in the forest. Thankfully, he wasn’t too far in, where hotshots like Oak and Beech soaked up the Light and left trees like Maple to wither and die.

 

So, Maple was happy. He was secluded enough so none of the noisy pink humans came by with their axes, and he still was surrounded by Life and Green and Light.

 

He was not expecting the little one. To say that he was expecting one of the humans to come up to him, to converse with him in strange words, would be like saying that he, a tree, expected a tidal wave to sweep him out of the ground. And this particular human was _thrumming_ with Green. It ran through his veins like blood, like he was Forest and Life where his counterparts were noisy and rude, and had no Green in them.

 

The little one found him by running headlong into his trunk. Maple would have been quite indignant if the human hadn’t immediately curled up on his roots and started leaking from his face.

 

_Was this normal human behavior?_

 

Maple’s humanese wasn’t great. He caught snippets here and there of the metal ones talking about _camp_ and _hunt_. Once, a great hulking one put some of his discarded twigs in a pile and lit it on _fire_ right next to his _very flammable trunk_.

 

To say Maple didn’t understand humans would be an understatement. To say that Maple didn’t like fire would also be an understatement.

 

But this little one was rather cute, in the way a duckling or a fawn was. Maple didn’t know why this child was leaking, however. Was he hurt? Maple was at a loss. The little one raised his head. He had stopped leaking, and was now…what? He was talking to his trunk. Maple caught one in maybe ten words, but his tone was furious, frustrated. This Green child was conversing with him, acting like Maple was his confidant.

 

 _Was_ this _normal human behavior?_

 

The Green child came back. Some days he would leak, but more often than not he would come baring his teeth, relaxed and happy, shedding Green like a wood sprite. He climbed onto Maple’s branches, and Maple’s humanese gradually improved as he listened to the little one putter on and on about his village, his mother, even his tormentors.

 

_“And Will, well, he tries his best, but he can’t understand, you know? He’s not a freak like me. He’s not different. And I wish he wouldn’t defend me so. It makes them all turn on him when it’s my fault that they’re even there.”_

As discomfited by the child as Maple was, he soon grew used to the little one climbing his trunk and prattling on. Living in the forest for decades wasn’t the most exciting thing, and he soon found that the child’s visits gave him a welcome break in the monotony of watching a caterpillar inch its way out to his leaves and then eat them very slowly. _Rude._

 

One day, it was different. The Green child came to him, running, his Green roiling under his skin. Maple was bemused, but welcomed the child nonetheless as he climbed his branches, stinking of fear. Then Maple heard the shouting. It was the gang of children that his child would talk about running from, would talk about being bruised and beaten in a way that made Maple want to crack a branch over the heads of the bullies.

 

Now, they were at the base of his trunk, throwing stones at his child, who was tucked away in his branches. Maple yearned to help his child, to incapacitate the horrible gang of human pests on his roots, but trees cannot move that way. They are slow, deliberate. They take decades to shift even an inch but cling grimly onto stones in the hillside and stand stolid through the hurricanes of winter.

 

Maple could do nothing for his child but be a barrier. He wished to move as freely as his Green child, to bash down with righteous fury on the bullies, but for now he would have to be placated by every rock striking his trunk that would not strike the child. He held fast in the knowledge that his bark would withstand what the little one’s pink skin could not. He held steady and strong until the swarm grew tired and ran away to torment another of their own kind.

 

The little one was leaking again. Maple let go of one of his leaves in a gust of wind, letting it blow into the child’s face. The little one startled, then laughed. It was an empty sound, but Maple rejoiced in the small smile that lingered on the Green child’s face.

 

_“You know, sometimes I think you’re the only one who listens to me.”_

The child stretched out his hand, running his fingers over a chip in his trunk from where a stone had struck him.

 

_“Another friend who has gotten hurt because of me.”_

 

 _Friend_. That was a word that Maple had only heard around that blasted campfire, when the humans were sitting up late at night. That was a word for the little one’s _Will_ , the one who took the punches with the Green child and stayed true in spite of the hurt.

 

Maple wanted to be the little one’s _friend_.

 

The child was focusing, tongue peeking out from between his teeth, hands over the gashes in Maple’s trunk. The damage was merely superficial, Maple wanted to tell his _friend_. It bothered him less than the woodpecker or the mites that burrowed beneath his bark. But he could not speak, for he had no mouth.

 

Maple felt a jolt come from the little one’s hands. His Green was flowing into Maple, healing the wounds in his branches and trunk. The Green was _big_ , like how Maple felt when he stretched down through the mycelium on his roots, like how maybe the ground kept going and going past the forest and Nature stretched on and on with no end and there was just Green at the end of it. Green like this child.

 

His little one, his _friend_ , was this _Emrys_ that the wind sung about when it wove through his branches. The Green child, the _Emrys,_ was Forest in the way that Maple was, that the animals and the humans that came by in packs with little pockets of Green at their fingertips.

 

The _Emrys_ was his child.

 

His child sat back on his branches, rubbing over the newly healed bark.

 

_“Mother’s sending me away, you know. She can’t keep the villagers at bay for much longer, and I’m losing control of my… you know.”_

 

If Maple could have stiffened, he would have. The little one was being sent away from him?

 

_“I’ll be sent to Camelot, to my Uncle. Gaius? Yeah. Gaius. Anyway. I just want to thank you, you know. For being there for me. I guess you were my rock, even though you’re a tree.”_

He laughed again. Maple failed to see why, but he was glad the little one was happy.

 

_“I’ll come back. I’m going to come and visit Mother, and see Will. And you. Because you and Will are the only friends I have.”_

_Friend._

 

His Green child lingered for a while longer, then wrapped his body around Maple’s trunk. He trotted off, becoming lost in the undergrowth and the shadows of dusk.

 

So, Maple waited. He continued to stretch up to the Light, every day, just like his family around him. But he never forgot the child that took refuge in his branches. And his child did come back, just like he promised. He was more and more the _Emrys_ each time he came, and each time his little Green child was a little more broken. Maple had a feeling that his trunk could not protect him from his enemies anymore, even if his little one still climbed into his branches like he could hide from his childhood bullies. One day, his child brought another person. This one was not Green, but golden and metal and red like the humans that used to ride through here. His tone was sardonic, his words biting, but Maple’s child just smiled, peaceful and happy as he rested his hand on Maple’s trunk.

 

_“What, do you talk to trees now?”_

_“Your royal intuition has never failed you, sire.”_

Maple knew that this golden human was the other half to his child that the wind sung about. It sung about the Green being returned to the earth, freedom, _freedom_ and _peace_. It carried the tales of the _Emrys_ and his king from all over, coming from stone walls of the human citadel or from the trees themselves on the other end of the forest.

 

Maple knew that his Green child would give himself for someone else. He’d known it since the little one had healed his trunk, putting all of his focus, effort, his Green, into healing the tree’s superficial wounds. So, when the wind sung him the heartrending melody of a coin split apart, he thought that his child was gone for good, returned to the earth.

 

He was a little surprised when his child crashed down at his roots and started leaking again. It seemed that the _Emrys’s_ other half had gone, was waiting to be replanted when the world needed him. The _Emrys_ , his little Green child, would endure until he was reunited with his king at last.

 

Maple could not shield the little one from Time. The _Emrys_ would watch the world age, decay, and start over while he stood stagnant, like a tree, the Green in his veins keeping him walking the earth.

 

Maple would age with the forest. And when he grew old, rotten, and crashed to the ground, his Green fading from his core, his child came and leaked on his trunk one last time. Maple knew that he wasn’t going for good, he was just returned to the earth, but he gave his child one last gift before he faded completely into the soil. The amber bead fell onto the soft peat and was promptly rescued by his child. The little one sniffled, trying to stem his leaking as he clutched the bead, his Green reaching out to Maple one last time.

 

_“Thank you for being my friend.”_

_Friend._


End file.
